001all right we're going to call this meeting to order please stand for the pl salute ready begin okay we've got four board members here and Dan virtually so we've got all five of us we're going go to number two District highlight have you lead in that yes I will lead that tonight two District highlights for you October is principal appreciation um it's not only for our principles but our assistant principles as well and just there is a proclamation that is from the state of Washington signed by the governor I'm not going to read the entire thing but um I am going to read just a section of it whereas the Washington Senate in coordination with the efforts of the National Association of Elementary School principles the National Association of Secondary School principles and the United
002States Congress has designated October National principl month to honor and recognize the contributions of all School principles and assistant principles to the success of each student in Washington schools our most valuable resource and to encourage residents of Washington to promote awareness of the importance of school leadership in ensuring that every child has access to a high quality education uh now therefore I J nley governor of the state of Washington do here by complain October 24 uh as National principal month so with that being said just a shout out to our principls and assistant principles in the work they do uh for our students that is highlight number one that has been ongoing for the entire month of October highlight number two comes to us just in the last couple of days and again I'll read
003this this is a a news release from the central Washington Hispanic chamber of commerce announces its 2024 estraya Award winners and the award winner in the category of Education there are categories that recognize people in agricultureal business emerging leaders healthc care nonprofit public and Civil Service uh as well as education so we're looking at the entire yaka County here from the Hispanic chamber of commerce and the award winner for education is Max Diaz teacher at CA Intermediate School third grade teacher so pretty impressive for Max to get this award uh the culmination of the uh estrea award C celebration taking place today which is October 18th this event serves as a vibrant cele celebration of our community's achievement with nominees receiving the recognition they richly deserve our committee is committed to transforming the estray awards
004in with Hispanic Heritage Month into Central Washington's celebration we aim to uh provide this as evidence of a strong Community Connection and so max was recognized there um pretty incredible to have one of ours to be recognized uh of all the Educators in the acal valley they selected Max so well done to Max great great conratulations to Max so on to suggestions and comments from the audience you want to read that I can yeah I'll read that on behalf of the board do we have public comment tonight is there public comment signed up for us is anybody in the audience wanting to make public comment tonight and we had no emailed in either we have no email public comment tonight okay then do you still want me to read public comment since there's not going
005to be anybody taking it or just want to move forward Noe we'll move forward okay so item four meeting minutes approval of the meeting minutes from September 26 and October 10th had a chance to review them and make a motion to approve those minutes I'll move that we approve the minutes from September 26th and October 10th 2024 I'll second the motion any discussion all in favor open the I I I all oppos minutes pass now on to the item five consent agenda um Mr Morford do we want to make sure that we get Dan's involvement in this is Dan are you still there yep I vote I or yes on that thank thank you just for the for the minutes for the next month to have him make sure on the next item Dan we
006call you out uh individually okay consent agenda got a few items on there I'll start with Chris sure um no comment on the HR action not a lot of happenings there we are obviously staffed up for the most part we have a few little classified par educator move we've had a little movement with that classification but you'll see that there's not a lot of action there as far as payroll goods and services um I wanted to make sure to point out the uh liability insurance bill that's coming before the board for approval tonight um as you can imagine uh our insurance costs have gone up like most people even your personal insurance um you can see this this bill is $43,200 um over the last three years our liability insurance has increased by 55% our
007local Educational Service District did a survey um with all the 25 school districts in this area all of us are a member of the schools Insurance Association of Washington and we there's very few districts that aren't through there so pretty much everybody's receiving these types of increases but they did do a survey with all 25 districts uh CA was the ninth lowest uh total premium increases out of all of them so the 55% increase in the last three years uh 20% was the increase from last year to this year um remember a lot of factors go into premium increases our uh loss ratios are building new schools buying new vehicles when we do buy new vehicles all of those things come into play as along with other things um just the whole uh climate and
008other components of the insurance um get weighed into that for final premium increases that as you know CA has improved a lot of our schools in the last uh three years uh a new kindergarten building a new John Campbell uh primary campus a new Transportation Cooperative facility and as those things happen obviously those get reflected in your your insurance another component of this that I wanted to highlight is under board policy well under the siw the schools Insurance Association of Washington being a member were required to to hire an insurance broker um so we hired Central Washington Insurance several years ago um board policy 1610 um speaks to uh direct or indirect Financial interests by any board directors um so if you own a business that the school district does uh business with that there
009is a requirement that we as a district do not pay that business uh more than $3,000 per calendar month for the services that we're receiving from the company um because Jamie obviously is owner of central Washington insurance now um he has to live within their we cannot pay him more than $3,000 a month um The District's been very fortunate for several years we have paid we're paying $1,100 a month for that service and I think when we hired Central Washington Insurance several years ago Ben graph owned the company I think we started at uh $900 a month and that was I can't even tell you how many years ago so the premiums are uh very affordable for the school district um it's nice to have a local broker in town because they act as boots
010on the ground for us when we have any incidents that could lead to a claim so if we have floods in our buildings or fire or anything that really comes up Personnel related or student related accident wise um one of our first calls is to um Central Washington Insurance to get support so I wanted to highlight that bill tonight in the payroll goods and services um I don't that was my main focus tonight on the bills because it is an extremely large bill I wanted the board to be aware of the details of it any questions on that thank you don't have questions for Chris on that do you have any questions for insurance and the any of the bills we've paid I'll take the two uh policy reviews you have a first reading tonight
011under item D in the consent agenda you bet I I think you've been made aware in previous meetings and through Communications I've made with you that a lot of these are coming to us now and they're all very similar they've gone through the federal law the state law and are now two school districts to implement into policy so last month you had first reading in regards to uh the things with regarding to Title 9 changes and I told you that you would be getting another set of these for the this month and that's what you'll see on that first reading uh I do call attention to the differences between new and revised you will see that there are two new policies 3206 pregnant and parenting students and 512 parental family and marital status and pregnancy
012or related conditions of Staff those are new the other two uh are revised and then in your second reading those uh if approved tonight would be adopted and again those are the ones we covered last month in first reading uh We've included the policy review or policy overview for you and then the accompanying documents uh in in board docs chis you want to take uh the resolution we are required by law to cancel or old warrants every two years and payroll um outstanding um uncashed checks every year so the resolution in front of you tonight represents those outstanding warrants and checks and we've already reported the unclaimed property to uh the state and um so now we just are required to have board approval of the resolution to do that chis I have a question
013on that so are those funds A sheeted to the state or do we get to retain them I mean it's not a significant amount but we retain them yeah as we go into uh item G and item H within the consent agenda uh also in board docs you did see that there's been two donations that have been made both have been been made to the middle school I like to thank uh the donor of uh by the name of Philip Colby uh from defense fencing company uh made a donation a thankful donation of $1,729 um and then um the donor on the second one also to the middle school for boys and girls soccer for $1,458 the donor is Kings Row uh also Isaac Raymond is listed as that one yeah you do have before
014you some student trip requests uh whenever our students uh are spending in the night uh or going out of state they have to get pre-approval by the board you have two before you tonight both of them again are at the high school uh first one is uh our Deca uh Club is going to bellw staying overnight looks like 10 students will be making that trip to Belleview November 7th through the 9th um with uh chaperon and then the second one is we have uh FCCLA Advisory Board state officers uh going to Spokane Falls uh November 11th through Wednesday November 13th uh only one student and one adult staff member going into that as well any questions about any of the donations before you tonight or have overnight travel requests no questions all right I'll move
015we approve the consent agenda I'll second okay all in favor please say I I I opposed Dan I'm registering in a I sorry about that it's hard to hear Jamie a little bit I can hear Chris and Kevin real well I thank you Dan yep all right we can move on to student report we thought we might have a student here but schedule must have came up and got her so we'll move up to executive director for student learning we got a student data report here good evening um just wait till we I have a slideshow I think uh should be pulled up here in a second there it is uh the first few slides I'm going to go over really quickly there are slides you've seen before basically are biking promise but really the
016intent of tonight was to kind of go over who are the students in our schools um and I've kind of done a 10 years ago till now just to see that our student body has shifted some and our needs have shifted some uh in some areas pretty drastically over just a 10 per 10e period and then so it'll be more like enrollment demographic data then we'll go over some um um some I data from the fall and then spring SBA data for for our schools uh before I begin though this is just our team is a little bit different this year I'm in this role now uh Betty Lopez is our executive director of student services Jeff Cochran is our director of future learning Christy Iran is our director of student support at the bottom
017there is Rachel Dibble she's our our data kind of wizard who helps us pull together data oh I lost it oh again this is I'm gonna fly through this because this is just our Viking promise I'm sure you guys have seen this a million times before so um overview I'm g go over overall enrollment history um our students experience poverty the changes there are highly capable programming enrollment multilingual programming migrant students uh students 504 our health needs uh special education numbers and then mckin vento uh then we'll end with more academic data looking at our first through eth grade I from this fall and looking a little bit back in the spring of I and then also our spring SBA data so our enrollment over time uh has generally stayed hasn't hasn't shifted drastically in
018in regards to Total enrollment in 20145 we were just over 3600 last year we averaged our end number was 3,800 so we've increased about 200 students over over the past 10 years you can see it has you know different years we've gone up and down a little bit uh with that our our racial demographics have changed so it might be hard to see but on on the left we're about 68% uh uh students were white in 20145 20 about 28% students were Hispanic Latino um those are really the ones that have shifted are are ones at the bottom really haven't our end size is pretty small you can see that our our two racial demographics of white students and Hispanic Latino students are starting to kind of merge um this is directly again these are
019post all these data is directly posted from OPI report card for our district um this is our program characteristics in the next few slides um because what I we'll be looking at the actual numbers of these percentages of students for each program because I think it's kind of hard to look at it all at once but you can generally see where our students fall uh it's the the Orange is yes they are part of that program the black or brown bar is no they're not part of that program and I didn't pull out every single number for some of these because the the the number the end size was um didn't didn't shift too much I tried to pull out ones that we thought shifted the most uh and starting with our students experienc in
020poverty or our students that qualifi for free roduced lunch uh in 20145 we were almost 53% of our student body qualified pre reduce lunch last year was almost 63% so 10% increase uh this year we're projecting with our enrollment um and our um our Snee forms coming back that would be close to two-thirds of our district qualified for free ruce lunch and to put that in a numbers perspective it's 25 2500 students out of our 3,800 is um 3700 this year uh qualified for preu lunch and so that's why I wanted to pull out the numbers because I feel like a 10% change doesn't feel like a whole l but you look at the actual total numbers from 1900 to it's 600 kids that's almost it's a full that's more than John Campbell Elementary combined
021um Hunter between 14 15 and current is there any different standards of what a person has to do to show that they are qualified for it um yes but it's been kind of on a sliding sliding scale so I think they they take in consideration uh cost of living adjustments so the actual income qualification is a different number but it's generally the same don't quote me out but it's generally the same kind of uh percentage ban that would would qualify that answer your question no there's actually uh more Hoops now uh to qualify the form is longer I guess I would say now uh the other side of that is since we're above a threshold of more than 50% of our students uh qualifying for r in all of our schools um we we got
022a three-year waiver where we don't have to necessarily um we get funds regardless and we're continue to monitor but every three years to renew that I can't remember the name of every four years um Community eligibility program C so yeah so that's how we get free lunch for all students um with that there's it's called a sne form and it's a a little bit more in depth it's a lot a little bit longer to fill out uh and actually one thing we had a push at our conferences we had really low uh turnout rates or uh completion rates of getting those in when school started so we try to do a push at conferences to get more of those in because funding does come with our free reduced lunch uh uh percentage and if we
023dip below 50% over a threeyear average we're potential of losing uh some funding and in pretty substantial funding so we were project how we got to 65% for this year was the ones we've gotten in um has been about 65% clip in regards to families that qualify if you do hear about Snee it's it's just filled out once per family so that's one thing that is a little bit easier it's not have to fill out for each student that can also be confusing if you're being asked multiple times at different schools to be filled but families only need to fill it out once if to qualify uh High cap uh what is know highly capable Learners we we call High cap for short uh in 20145 we had 58 total students in our district uh
024as of last year we had 253 students like so this is kind of the our high achieving students uh I wouldn't say this is probably a ship we've gotten better at identifying I would say of of and having a more um systematic process of qualifying for highed capable Services uh and this year our currently as is right now uh we have 249 students with our referral window open through middle of December so we'll have more students qualify uh every year we have more students qualify in January and February going through the high cap uh referral process um but you can see it's uh five-fold uh increase in identifying our highly capable Learners our multilingual Learners um have almost or they almost doubled from 10 years ago we had 237 students total in our district uh
025this year currently we have 472 uh which is also already an increase from last year so our the language needs of our students have also shifted over time U migrant so this is uh for our migrant students our students that um whose families work in the migrant Community seasonal work primarily agriculture in our area um this has more than doubled uh from from from 10 years ago and I would say we've also gotten better at this as well we have a a phenomenal uh migrant coordinator who is getting better at has helped us get better at identifying U migrant students and getting them connected to servic and qualify them for migrant Services currently we have 236 students that qualify as a migrant Section 504 is under the realm of special education so this is students
026that require accommodations but not necessarily instruction um for their learning uh we had 40 total students so 1% of our student body uh this quadrupled over the 10 10e time so um and then this year uh we have 145 students so we graduated our students we went down a little bit from last year but still uh almost four times more than we had uh 10 years ago Health needs this is one that is not on OPI but this is one that we have noticed a shift uh in recent years uh probably the last three years is students with an individual healthare plan so these are students that have uh who are medically fragile or complex um we have 349 students total across our district that have a individualized healthcare plan that meet the category of
027medically fragile or complex most of these are in regards to um some type of allergy um but we also have uh more students that have you know that are diabetic that have like specific needs um and just wide range of of healthc care needs that has increased over the 10 years special education has remained relatively um stable we had 522 students 14% of our 14.4% of our student body uh almost ident iCal last year in regards to percentage and this year we actually went down a few we have 500 students currently and each year students we have more students qualified for special education we do have them exit so we predict that this will increase throughout the year but currently we're sitting at 500 and the difference between 504 and special education is special education
028is accommodations that are required for students identified with the disability and uh are required modified instruction for for for TI to their disability so with the uh special education students are most of do they have their own classrooms or are they mixed in with the regular classrooms or is it so it's a it's that's a good question it's a Continuum um and the the phrase you might have heard before is least restrictive environment so the law is we are we are supposed to provide education for all students in the least restrictive environment we don't want to remove a student who might just need 20 minutes of speech language and say because your special education you're in a room with with 10 other kids for your entire school day right because reason it sounds silly to
029say but that is some of the things that that used to happen in education so there are banss uh percentage bands that the state looks at 80 to 100% is what's considered the least restrictive under um under special education then there's a band of uh 60 80% 40 to 60% and then zero like 0% 0 to 20% in um so we were uh flagged for being having too higher percentage of our special education population in a more restrictive environment this was probably six years ago so some of our work has been to build some of our systems to be more inclusive so a lot of our students uh they might be placed in like what is called a co- te uh classroom where there's um either two certificated teachers uh they're one differentiating for students
030because they're they have a disability need they need to be mod ified but they can still access the grade level content they just need to be modified a little bit we also have some students that are um fully in a self-contained program uh and so it's it's a blend I would say most of our students fall within Betty would probably be the better one to ask this but a lot of our students fall within within special education 80 to 100 because that encompasses students with speech only and that's we have a huge number of students that have speech only and so that's relatively small in regards to Total minutes a week that they're provided that instruction but that answer your question yeah uh mckin vento uh these are students that are experiencing homeless homelessness or
031homeless youth um this is one that uh has definitely increased we had about 1% 48 students in our system 10 years ago uh last year we we had 76 we ended with 103 total in our district this year currently we're at 55 we what we typically see is by October for that was our number octob October 1st what we see by the end of the years typically doubles um from the past five years we've seen it double from October 1st to the end so my my assumption is that we will see over 100 students that are experiencing homelessness uh qualified from bikini vento Services any questions on just our our student body data and how that has shifted over time okay so now I'm going to jump into some academic I just want to point
032out also to everybody is that the data that you just saw is is accessible not only for our school district but all public schools in the state of Washington on the OSI website and you go into OPI and type in report card and you can find data on our school district you can find it by school and then any other school public school within the state of Washington is readily available as well the only C got to that is the the health the health needs is not one that will be on OPI but I felt like that is something we've seen changed pretty drastically over the last few years that I thought would be important for for you guys to hear um so I'm going to jump in now to our Benchmark data uh we
033use I ready uh and I'll show you spring from last year and then fall from this current year uh just to show some change and what you'll see uh in the education world we call it uh the summer slide uh typically we see students um they perform at end of the year at grade level or close to grade like they grow throughout the year summer happens and they they their their initial testing in fall shows lower than it's something typical what what I'm looking at the data our summer slide looks bigger than what is typically expected um so it's just something to to for you guys to think about ask any questions that you might notice Hunter would you talk about the amount of this is a test that's given three times during the course
034of the year can you talk about so so this this is an I already Benchmark data that has the standards that we use and and it's it's it's supposed to correlate well with the smarter balance assessments that we take uh in the spring we'll take this in the fall as our initial Benchmark we'll do a testing in January and we do do one in the spring as well uh there's a window so it's not not all schools are testing at the exact same time but it's generally like a three to four- week window where we ask schools to make sure they're completed um so this is our spring I'll start with spring and then I'll show you current so this is all schools so not disaggregated at all the green is what uh where we
035want students to be we had 44% of our students within Ela uh at grade level at the end of the year 27% were one grade level below so uh just there are are almost a grade level and then the red and it's hard to see the lines on the far right but the far right uh with the lines going diagonal through the red 177% means three or more grade levels below uh the just solid red is two two grade levels below so this is where we ended in the spring for all of our schools um this is where our current fall data for all of our schools so again U this was spring Ela all schools 44% at grade level uh 24% at grade level uh in the fall okay and then I'm going to
036go into the same data but then break it out a little bit by school so if you have any questions oh this is hard to read from this far away isn't it um this was spring I ready by school for ELA so literacy in the spring uh you can see junk it's it's in alphabetical order I would have preferred to have uh have it be in grade level order but that's not how I already has it um I'm going to flip to the fall you can see the the changes in the green yellow and red um but just to narrate for you all uh John Campbell was at 48% % on grade level Robert Lin was at 73% on grade level seear immediate was at 45% on grade level and CA Middle School is at
03733% on grade level then uh currently in the fall um and this isn't exactly Apples to Apples because this is looking at the current cohort of kids uh knowing that their oldest grade level left and it's also why we don't have Robert Lin Elementary School here because they don't take this in the fall they do walk walk kids so John Campbell starting off is at 16% starting on great grade level with knowing that half of their students were at 73% on grade level coming from Robert Lin Elementary uh CA immediate is at 27% on grade level and CA Middle School is at 29% on grade level on the far right are just the total number of students tested out of total number of students enrolled for for that school Hunter when you're speaking about on
038grade level so the group of students that was taking this at JCP they were being assessed last spring at that grade level and now the the fall I already is for their new grade level correct correct it's the first time that we'd be assessing them on grade level standards which they've really only been in school at this time for a few months yeah a few weeks actually few weeks so in the first few weeks of school so you're assessing them on the new grade level the new grade level yes new grade level standard at the same time and I ready the the solid green um if you are at the end of kindergarten standard you would be placed in what's called early on grade level to show that you are ready for first grade so
039even then we saw some slide because that band in solid green is lower than than what it was previous previously so as we would we would hope to see with all of these as you do the the next comparison you would hope to see more green and yellow and less red as we progress through this second and third round of testing absolutely and we do see that shift over uh throughout the year our goal is to have everyone in green and have very small yellow very small red um and we we do see that what we really don't want to see is that our yellow and red getting bigger that hasn't been typically what we've seen in the past we have seen it for a few grade levels but then we we then uh pull
040our our M and team together and say what is going what's going on with this data here and how can we make any adjustments uh I'm going to keep on going um just for sake so we can get through all of the data this is uh same process uh same data you're looking at just math spring math I ready uh 38% on grade level uh fall this year 133% on grade level this is then by school you can see is it helpful for me to narrate what the numbers are no you guys can see okay and then uh current fall I ready math so Hunter would it be fair to say that a child in theory testing in Spring would have to be one grade above grade level and not have any summer fall off
041in order to be at grade level the next year yes correct uh to to be at grade level yes to be early on grade level would be to let's use kindergarten as example if they they are at at grade level standard at the end of the year and they were to then not have any slide and still be keep their same level of learn like of knowledge and uh skills and they test it again they would show up as early on grade level here so that's why that's why I brought up the summer Slide the the slide we're seeing um is larger than than we would hope uh and that we that we would expect okay the other things and I want to you already can see the red and the red is where for
042us our our minds go to not that we don't focus on the yellow and green and and celebrate the green when needed but the red when you are looking at students who are significantly behind grade level multiple years behind the grade level how how do we get them caught up to a place where they can get back to the next grade level or to the grade level they should be at is probably one of the Great challenges we have in public education right now and that's why you see a lot of our emphasis have been towards um interventions to get them caught back up support systems to get them caught back up um identifying those students and developing almost like individual plans with them to to get them caught back up but I'm we don't
043we don't have the magic answer or we would have already implemented and done it but it's a challenge the the other um qualifier for for these assess ass Ms including SBA uh for our our these are English assessments for our dual language students who are instructed primarily in Spanish through through second grade um it's not the most um what I would say is reliable assessment for their learning because it's it's they're being assessed in a language that they primarily most of their instruction wasn't in we should we expect to see that switch in about seventh e8th grade when they it does start to flip and they're achieving high in both grade in both languages uh this assessment I wouldn't say is an accurate assessment so about a quar of our students are enrolled in dual
044language that could be some of the reason why it's suppressed as well because our our students are being assessed in the language that they're not necessarily being instructed in um I'm going to jump now to our Smarter Balance assessments so hun before hun goes on just this is your Baseline set of data we talked about this for the last few years of not only giving you the first glimpse of data in the fall but using it as a comparison from last spring as well so this is your first Glimpse and so in the next the next two times it review we reviewed the next time we review I ready data will be sometime in January February yeah okay so then we'll be able to show you spring fall and winter comparisons and then unfortunately when
045we spring data comes out it's right at the end of the school year and so we have to show it to you then either during the summer or at a meeting like this corre so just just know that we have a map of and plan of showing you assessment related data throughout the course of the year and trying to make it so that it's understandable and you can see progress or holes in our progress uh with regards to groups of students and also speaking to students that are either two or that are two or three grade levels below so the the red in this data uh our schools have made their their school Improvement go goals specifically for those students and I um there is typical growth like we would expect anyone any student to
046grow typically in a year uh that's normed uh what for for students there in the red if we have two consecutive years of what I already call stretch growth then that will get them back to grade level so this year for uh for I think all of our schools in in their school Improvement plans is they have set stretch growth goals for for the students that are far below grade level which is two or more grade levels below uh which is something that they will be monitoring which has not been systematic in the past in regards to setting stretch growth um and so that's something that will be monitoring actually just met with a few schools today to to set those goals uh and to monitor that along as we do these benchmark assessments we're
047seeing these numbers combined um do the student know what the student receives with the parents know what the students receive yes yes then so efforts to the support of how your child should spend it summer are those efforts made to the parent and you know if he's a grade behind or even if he's not a great level behind here's what a summer slack looks like yeah here's how you avoid that kind of stuff yeah and th those conversations uh should happen in our spring conferences now uh well the I the spring I ready data might not be uh it won't be ready at that point in time but we we we we know which students have not made enough growth to at that point in time in in March to say hey we're still far
048behind here here's how we can support a home uh this part of this I'm just kind of giving things that could possibly I'm not saying these are causes uh our summer school had was much smaller than it had been in the past this past year um and the summer what's required by the the state um is uh for summer school is students in third grade who are far below uh reading in in SBA they are required to be offered summer school in some form so that is we were only able to offer summer school this past year to just our third graders that were far behind in Reading I want to clarify something that I said earlier with regards to the data that you saw in the beginning with regards to our students I ready
049is not something that you can go out and do a comparison study between us and other districts okay it's our individual District who has selected the tool to be known to be called I ready there are other districts that use I ready but they may use it differently than we do we use it as a as you said a benchmark for three years to measure growth and find out and identify students so this is not something that you can do a comparison study in regards to students here or students in another school district maybe on the west side or in the Spokane area this is specific to us any other questions on our ready data for going to ba so uh Smart Balance assessment this is the summative State assessment that is given 3rd through
05012th grade um with one there was a major change in how uh scores are interpreted forba that came out in August so in August of this year 2024 they issued a memo clarifying the uh uh the misinterpretation misinterpretation of SBA scores um what the Smart Balance Consortium the organization that developed the the assessment um was they said that this misinterpretation of categorizing students who don't achieve at least level three or proficient uh as a literate unable to read or not CA not capable of doing grade level math this is not true so that is something that uh this that has been a shift from the state and they've actually shifted uh how they present the data on OPI on the OPI website on the report card and I'll show you in just a second they
051also went on first say students who achieve a level two on the SBA uh they must correctly answer grade level content to achieve that category as compared to category of level one uh they're not able to consistently answer grade level content so that is a shift uh with no further guidance of really what to to do with that shift other than it looks different on the report card and really it sounds like a um understanding of the level two is not necessarily to say that hey this this student doesn't know anything for the grade level cont they actually are showing um some levels of proficiency within the grade level just not to the depth that a level three or level four would and this this uh this has changed how they've displayed and interpreted the
052scores in the past so this was a change without much more um clarification that's supposed to be coming uh smarter balance is a nationwide uh testing organization uh States through Federal mandate have to select a a an entity to to do their State Testing state of Washington uses the sparter balance assessment and so what Hunter is saying is that for as long as the smarter balance has been around as the assessment tool it was always our understanding is that there was a line between the two and the three and you were if you were above the L line and you were a three or a four then you were uh capable of doing grade level work and moving towards being able to do college level work and college success and all that stuff if you
053you were a two or a one then you had a lot of work to do to get to the place you needed to two by the time you graduated so it is a very big shift in what we had been working on for I would say what's been 10 years 10 or or more with regards to Smarter Balance so it's very different philosophy I don't know why it came out it was a surprise to all of us and that all of a sudden we got this memorandum that talked about the change in their interpretation uh from SBI not from our state but from the organization that provides the assessment you'll you'll see what it looks like differently than it would be in the past yeah so then this is from our report card this is
054uh for seed intermediate I went school by school for this so you could see a little bit of the breakdown and this is how it looks different as well above is what is considered a three or four below is a two three or four so 33.7% of our students uh at CIS last year uh earned a three or four in the SBA assessment 35% in math 44% in science which is called the wcass assessment uh and then for students showing foundational grade level Knowledge and Skills are above so again a two are above we're at 62% 66% and 70% that's this so before there was oh this this laser pointer these were not uh on our website the only thing that would have been shown were these top the scores of a three or a
055four um again a change um from spa and from how the state is displaying the data with um not a whole lot of clarification of of of necessarily how to interpret it other than it's um they are saying what that the score of a level two is showing a level of proficiency that was not how was explained in the past even the the emphasis of the wording there students on track for college level learning without needing remedial class classes that that EMP that emphasis is different as well um so we felt it was important to make to share that with you because th those are those are changes uh for our entire system to look at this assessment in a different way than we had really looked at it before correct Middle School these are
056Middle School uh same numbers spring SBA 36% Ela 30 almost 30% in math 38% in science uh for scores three or four and for scores two and above 61% 56% and 64 a. half% and then for our high school data so this is also where uh the we also have data to show that I I don't know how accurate this this is and some of the um different factors that play into this we have more than 50% of our students in College college level uh college and high school classes that are succeeding that in earning college level credit u this is saying that only 15% of our students are um capable of doing that so some of the factors that that could be in play uh high school students have other path there's that's not
057required for graduation anymore and students have students families have figured have figured that out so um how how much weight and how much anxiety and importance to give to this assessment on a student individual student basis if I know I don't necessarily need it has been a factor um we've also had more students opt out of taking these assessments at the high school level than our other levels and um in the spring I think it was explained that if students opt out do not take the test it counts as counts as a one it does not it doesn't count as not tested it goes into our score our scores as a one but then you can see our other data here uh for to 68% scoring level two or above 34% scoring uh uh level
058two or above for Math and 57% in science so questions on the SBA data oh sorry one more thing about this this is this came from Smart Balance Consortium as well and how they are visualizing interpreting interpreting data as well so um which ties to what Kevin was saying is that a level two is showing grade level proficiency level two and above a level one is not which is a a drastic change from from what we were told how to interpret SBA Data before just a comment as a parent who has brought kids up through this system it's really not clear to parents like when we go to conferences and stuff what all these numbers mean um it's hard to digest and I know you guys didn't come up with the system but it would
059sure be nice to go to something like percentages that are pretty easy to understand sure um I know we don't have a choice in the matter but yeah this is all confusing as a parent yeah and what I would hope is is that at conferences we're really looking at when you're meeting with your teach I have a question for your teacher you're looking at what are the skill like what are the skills that my student needs to work on uh the assessment data is important but also what does that mean in regards to what should my what's the next step for my student to be to be learning to improve and to grow um and you're right there's there's SBA assessment there's I ready assessments there's uh at our elementary there's eara reading which are
060colors and so it's all different systems that um I I can appreciate how uh how so that's good feedback for me to consider how do we make this more streamlined so parents really understand where is really we want to parents need to know where is my student at uh in regards to where they should be uh for their grade level and what do they need in order to grow regardless if they're below at or above grade level okay so um what does this mean I've kind of hit hit on this some already uh we don't necessarily know the the changes that came down so we we want to seek some further clarification of the the changes in the scores to make sure we're not misinterpreting the new interpretation of the SBA scores um we need
061to uh set set goals for for each of our buildings uh on on instruction and our Focus this year um from our admin perspective is to really make sure they are being instructional leaders because one of the biggest uh impacts in improving uh academic data is to have an instructional Focus from your leaders and giving feedback to teachers to help grow their practice because if when teachers improve their practice students uh learning uh achieve at a higher level so that's been our Focus going into this year uh with getting really good at setting uh concrete specific goals that are tied directly to the data that we have because I I mean seeing it in front of you we have we have a lot of work to do in regards to improving our student data we
062also have a lot of data that that show a different story than this in regards to the the rigor and achievement of our students um so I hope you take this as this is one data point um and going into next uh in Winter I'll go over the walk kids data which is our another assessment that our only our kindergarteners do to show where our earliest Learners are coming into our K12 system and where they're at and then I'll also bring back the growth data looking at the stretch growth and typical growth and I'll probably break it down more by grade level at that point not just aggregate School data so any questions on any other questions I guess I should say so much a question Hunter but I guess just a comment of kind
063of what I've heard and I know all these assessments have a little bit different uh purpose to a point and when when the community has an issue with like our testing for example spring I ready Ela all schools at the end of spring 29% of our students were two or more grade levels behind yet not 29% of our students were held back and so that communication of what these tests really mean versus what we're learning in the classroom and having the skills set and so I guess that's kind of rambling statement I'm making but you know how when we're communicating with d you like in dereck's case where he says you know it's confusing with a parent what is this data meeting yeah my kid should not have passed but we did anyway does it
064mean that you know so that's just kind of how do we how do we communicate that to the stakeholders in the community yeah well and so you mentioned that's a good question uh and you mentioned retention so retention as a strategy specifically um has uh counter effects for it is it is is a an effective strategy uh situation specific I would say for indiv for specific students I would say the younger the student um the more likely that might might work what what we have found and it's been found in research as well is that as students progress if they were to be retained they're more likely to drop out they're more likely to uh not come to school um now I say that with uh kindergarten level and if they're young like there's a
065whole kind of like a that we would go over with a family to see for your individual student would this make sense for them to repeat a grade and to be retained and that does happen on occasion when I see this data I that's also why I started with some of our enrollment demographic data the needs of our students have changed drastically over 10 years uh which is uh we feel it we also need to change some of our practices to to to be able to meet the student needs um so I now I'm rambling I don't know if I answered your question or not students never going to get held back because of an I ready test correct but they're going to be presented that information you know and so well I it's important
066to triangulate data as much as we can because we also uh some students um on on large assessments like that anxiety comes into play or their attention is like there I already can take it takes multiple days takes multiple hours to complete a test it's not always the most accur accurate assessment of an individual student skills U so if and teachers being Experts of of their kids if they they might have other data to say on this reading assessment that I did with them oneon-one on a cold read they're able to read a great level passage with 99% accuracy and and and fluently that's another data point to say no like yes this point is should bring up concern let's do I have any other data to say that this uh for my for this
067student I'm not as worried about what the IR says because I have other you know classroom work and other uh classroom based assessments that show they're they've got the grade level content just on this one time on this one time assessment they didn't they didn't show up that day for whatever Reon perfect that's what I appreciate because sometimes this is kind of just right in our face and you know it's one Matrix but it you know it's on the website it's you know it's there and right okay thank you it can I get some clarification on we can just talk about the spring I ready that Jamie just mentioned and it kind of touches on a question that you asked a little bit ago so we're looking at fall data so I have a second
068grader and they were at or above so they're green or extra green there we would expect only those green slashed kids really to be at grade level when they go into third grade it makes sense that our small I ready numbers align with the kids that were above grade level correct second graders above grade level they might be at grade level when they test in the fall in third grade correct so is that how we're measuring summer slide I mean it's it doesn't feel like we can actually make that compar our kids didn't I mean yes there is summmer slide yeah but I don't know that looking at the data this way is good representation of that unless I'm misunderstanding so uh if there was if a if a student was at grade level this
069is this is math okay so the spring I already or yeah so looking at the I ready Ela we went from 44% in the green is that no am I at one go up one more okay this one right so we have 44% 24% of those kids are mid or above grade level correct so it's just you know one grade level it's second grade then I would only expect 24% % of my kids testing in the fall to be at grade level for third grade correct so when we go to the next slide and it is 24% in the green that tracks correct yes yeah this is all school so it's a little bit like you can see some of the slide shows more when we look at the the the school the school data
070but yes that tracks exactly yes so I have a question related to that or maybe a comment uh as far as it might be easier for me to understand it if we instead of looking at Spring to Fall we were look at the year previous and cohorts so for example if we're showing this for third grade fall then a comparison of fall of those second graders correct yeah I can we can totally do that and that's where I think next time when we show we'll show growth from fall to winter for this grade level but uh next next year if we do this again I can totally bring cohort data to track through yeah can we get the data on numbers of kids that are not taking the test I mean we all recognize this
071is a a standardized test and it's just you know Ela or the the I ready is one data point at one point in time for one kid and but if we can see you know especially the high school we I know we have kids opting out I made my high school kids take the exam because I I know that it's important to have those numbers but it's that's really not a priority for um students and families and I know that our numbers you know that reflects poorly on us it doesn't seem fair to the district as we it's not accurate and I would like accurate numbers is there a way we can pull out like the ones that were truly didn't take it we we an idea yeah it won't be it won't be an
072official OPI they they include that as ones but we we can find out how many opted out of taking the test or did not take the test in the spring and do our own internal to pull that data out and make our own visualization what the difference is there it's a it's a I've done that analysis it's a percentage that can that can definitely make a different because there are there is a segment of that percentage that chooses not to test whether that's a parent choice or a student attendance Choice which is also a whole different issue students not attending when the tests are provided for a variety of different reasons and then not attending when the makeup days are provided and the window to test is only so long and you have to submit
073thing so there's a variety it's not just all all the parents have decided not to test but the attendance of students on testing days and not making up is a is a part of this as well also a part of this is that for example you may have multiple days of testing Ina maybe not all done on the same day so if a student only participates in one of those say three sessions then that's going to definitely have an impact they may have knocked it out of the park on the one that they took but by not taking the other two that eventually is going to turn out to be a very very low score but that's point is that it it feels like in particular the high school because that's where most of the
074kids are going to be not taking yep choosing not to like what is is the point of being this this I mean that's why we when we look at data we have to look at it as uh uh District level all students we have to look at as grade level or cohorts but really the importance of looking at the data is by the individual student when we look at data individually by students we can find a lot more about them and about their needs and about the areas that they struggle in academically as well as the uh areas that they have success in so when you when you take an indiv idual student and you do a data dive on them as a teacher that that's really the most important data that you can use
075not suggesting that this data isn't important but as a whole it feels very inaccurate and that I think that's dangerous that's it is and that's that we have we do it we we think it has definitely benefits for a systemwide approach especially when we start seeing students perform multiple or grade levels below but the real benefit of having this assessment and the IR assessment is the ability to dive down to the individual student and to track their individual growth instead of looking at as a grade level or a whole system that's really going to benefit the individual student and I I already specifically um through through really K through a it's how we've built our interventions so we have uh intentionally um created smaller groupings of students with specific skills that they're working on during
076intervention time based off a some of the skills that I already with some progress monitoring in between to make some adjustments but we have a walk to model at our K through five schools where students go to the skill level they need regardless if they are far below or or far above grade level um so the I ready is more useful data the SBA by the time we get it it's we didn't get this official report until uh this school this school year and it was about last Springs data so it's it is it is one data point I think it does inform some parts of our system but it can be I think dangerous to make uh two harsh or two glowing of judgments either side by just looking at the the SBA data
077that was it for Me closing I don't have any closing remarks I'll pass it back to you guys my closing remarks is just to remind you that we made a commitment as a school district with you as the board to do a better job of bringing you data uh on a timely basis and uh for the last two years obviously Alicia has led this and now Hunter is leading this effort so be prepared for two or three more sessions that we provide you data on our students thanks Hunter all right associate superintendent for District Operations report that in advance the deadline submitted that's um the other thing I wanted e now which is important to mention also is that that's not just a free open gate um when a when a student from a outside
078of our res out of our school district applies first of all there's an application process an approval process and a release process they're being released from their home District they have to be approved by the non-resident district and then we have a further step where we do analysis of the student and and in many cases if uh a um a higher Elementary or secondary student uh we look at their attendance we look at their academic performance and we look at their behavior and if all those things are lining up uh then we would invite them to be uh on a basically a one year every year is a new year for out of Resident students they have to reapply every year so they would be granted the ability to come here uh for the younger
079students you don't have as much of that data per se about the individual students but we can still see a lot I will tell you that we do Decline and deny students when they make the request to attend here uh in some cases because of or attendance not academically progressing as they should be or if their behavior or if there's a combination of those through we will not allow that some students will take a we we'll give them like a start a fresh start based on uh reaching out to the previous schools and speaking with the people who work with those students in some cases there's there's reason where they need a change of placement and there's reasons that maybe it's a better opportunity for them here uh also remember that if uh a parent
080is making that choice to move their children into a non-resident School District they have obligation to provide the transportation as well so it's not like our buses are going out to uh other locations outside of our district to pick up non-resident students lastly on that non-resident student uh appliations are all done through Jennifer she is the kind of the gatekeeper with all of that and they're only good for one year and so we may have a student who's been going here there for since kindergarten and they're they're now in high school every year that family has had to submit a non-resident application and have it be approved by the resident school district and the non-resident school district for them can continue that is an area that you as board members may be questioned on so
081instead of trying to explain all that send them to Jennifer allf right thank you for the report Chris uh Kevin for Dan a report all right my report is amazingly enough we are almost at the end of October uh and you know that October brings with us a lot of um a lot of uh activities events um we get into the concert times for for our students we get at the end of uh athletic and activity sessions and Seasons uh we begin to think about what's going to happen as we approach the holiday seasons and it's a Time the first time that we have a formal opportunity for parent conferences it's the the month that we try to recognize the importance of safety uh within our schools safety with on our school buses as well
082uh it also is a time that we reach out to a lot of reach out to our community and different facets of our community uh it's the time where I provide up information about what's going on in the schools uh report to the city council uh in October our faith-based partners we have a meeting and provide them with information and then just general information to to a lot of different people uh November brings some things as looking forward to November November board meeting for us board members there is only one board meeting in November there's not a study session in no November um it has to do with the holidays and it has to do with uh at times in the past where the board attended the state school director's conference uh which would always
083be in Conflict uh November also brings with a very special time where we celebrate uh the veterans uh in our community and with celebrations of Veterans Day it is a non-school day on 11-11 but our celebrations are in uh in in prior to that uh many of our uh programs or assemblies or activities to to recognize veterans and and show our appreciation to them is done that Friday beforehand uh the second in a series of community forums uh that I'm leading in our community for people to just come to a location and talk about whatever is going on in the schools or in the community the second one of those is happening on the 19th of November uh there will be information being sent out and shared CommunityWide for people who would be interested 6:00
084on the 19th at the middle school is again uh November ends and uh ends the the first grading period which is the first Tri semester of our school year we break our school year into thirds uh the um right before Thanksgiving vacation marks the end of that first third and then for you as a board know this but for the community members who are following online or for those in in attendance tonight we have a change in our calendar this year La in previous years traditionally the Wednesday before Thanksgiving it was a half day early release um we realized that that was challenging families uh and that it was challenging our staff and that uh it was one of the most missed days of work for our staff and one of the most missed days
085of school for our students and so as we began to think about the calendar uh we made a change that Wednesday will be a no school day this year so the Thanksgiving uh break per se is Wednesday Thursday and Friday this year so if you're did not realize that I hope you have made plans accordingly and that's it for me thanks Kevin item 10 board Communications do we have any Dan can you hear us still yeah I got it right here hang on um can you hear me yes okay let me pull up I've got written board communication uh let me do this all right um at the request of one of my colleagues on the board I'd like to briefly clarify the statement I provided to The yimer Herald Republic regarding the outcome of
086the recent book challenge at ca he School my emailed statement to the paper included the following sentence the board as a whole thanks them meaning the district instructional committee for this thoughtful and thorough service to our district in an effort to be gracious and to acknowledge the many extra hours devoted by staff and parents I prematurely made this statement without seeking the board's input I assumed Inc correctly that there would be a unanimous agreement regarding this sentiment over the weekend a fellow board member contacted Ed me and requested that I clarify that I was not speaking on behalf of the entire board there may well be agreement I assume there I still sort of assume there is agreement regarding our appreciation of the committee's work but it should not have been assumed so that's on
087me to correct this the statement should read I meaning Dan Peters thank them for this thoughtful and thorough service to our district as I carefully noted in my written comments and as clearly stated in the article the rest of my remarks Mar s were more editorial in nature and as such were made in my capacity as an individual board member and of course as a father of former students not as a spokesperson for the entire board I I'm really glad this board member brought this concern to my attention I've learned from The Exchange and uh I believe our openness to each other's critiques uh makes for healthy board relationships and I hope this clarifies any misunderstanding Thank you uh Jennifer for letting me uh um join remotely like this and thank you to the board
088for being patient uh while I made my statement thank you thank you Dan any other board Communications I'll go ahead and respond to that since I was the board member I know uh Dan didn't want to point me out specifically um I do want to apologize to Dan and the other board members um for the way that I texted I'd been out of service and I got home that evening started getting text messages did you see the article I had a couple of phone calls and um the presentation was and and really the uh I I should have directed that more at the way the article was written than to uh Dan statements um because the the way that the article was presented and several people who communicated with me um the way that they
089took it was that the whole board was in agreement with the um outcome and I can't speak for the rest of the board members I'm speaking for myself individually I didn't agree with the outcome or the decision by the committee um but we were voting like it was clearly stated in the article we were voting on the process and there was really nothing during that process that was a miss and so that's why I voted that way um but as far as I mean with with the board policies I I trying to be very careful when I'm speaking on my personal opinions and not present those as board opinions and I think the article did a really poor job of presenting that um and I don't think that it I I misdirected my consternation towards
090Dan when really it probably should have been directed at the author of the article so thanks Derek Joe Sarah you guys got anything uh and we do not need an executive decision today so session I can do session today uh so with that we'll adjourn the meeting thank you guys for being here thanks guys see you soon